Culture and High Performance: The Basics
As more and more of my sport psychology consulting nowadays is with whole sporting teams, I have become increasingly interested in mental skills that relate to groups of individuals. One of these is to take a look at the culture of the team.
Examples of Poor Culture
The idea of culture and high performance was extensively explored in cricket in 2018. For those who do not follow this fascinating sport or who can’t remember, here is a quick summary from Wikipedia:
The 2018 Australian ball-tampering scandal, also known as Sandpapergate, was a cricket cheating scandal surrounding the Australian national cricket team. In March 2018, during the third Test match against South Africa at Newlands in Cape Town, Cameron Bancroft was caught by television cameras trying to rough up one side of the ball with sandpaper to make it swing in flight. Captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner were found to be involved, and all three received unprecedented sanctions from Cricket Australia. Although he was found not to have been directly involved, Australia’s coach, Darren Lehmann, announced he would step down from his role following the scandal. Smith was replaced by Tim Paine as captain in all formats before Aaron Finch took over from Paine in ODIs and T20Is.
After the dust had settled and the individuals who were responsible for the act were handed down their punishments, a lot of questions were still being asked about how a group of highly regarded/paid professional athletes could have ended up in such a predicament.
What Was Going Through Their Minds
How did the locker room allow for such poor decision-making? As part of the reviews, the talk switched from individual motivations to team culture. Was it ultimately a cultural issue that existed within Australian Cricket at that time?
Culture is the collective mentality and values of a particular organisation and group.
The Right Culture Should Never Be “Assumed“
It can be inherited from those who were previously members of the group. But it can also be quite fluid as some individuals depart and new individuals join. The right culture should never be “assumed”. A culture of sorts will always exist when a group of people come together and form a team whether they’re active in creating it in their preferred way or by letting it happen naturally.
I’m of the opinion that it is something that should be named openly among everyone and worked on actively so each individual associated with the organisation can have a sense of ownership and pride over what they have created. Not only this, but a strong and positive sense of culture also gives the organisation an identity. It can provide a guiding light to the individuals that can both be used as a motivator and create a sense of accountability for everyone’s individual actions.
An intentional culture can promote the well-being of an individual as they can feel accepted and belong, and, maybe the biggest thing of all, gives everyone a chance to develop a strong sense of both the individual and collection mental toughness.
How To Start Improving The Culture of Your Team
If you are a leader of a team or even a member of one, start thinking about your organisation and what you can do to create a better environment.
My recommendation is that you waste no time creating a situation where people can begin to contribute to a discussion and the organisation’s shared values can be formalised.
From our perspective as sport and performance psychologists, one of the key things that should be kept in mind and included within the process is that we can only control our efforts and therefore the culture and pursuits of the organisation should focus on giving people the opportunity to achieve consistent and high-quality effort, rather than having an obsession with results.
People often talk about a “winning culture” within a team, but for us, if this idea of “winning” is only focusing on the results you attain, then you leave yourself and your organisation vulnerable when things are not going to plan. Maybe this is what happened to the Australian Cricket Team in 2018.
The team can have goals that strive towards certain achievements, but along the way, the true reward and meaning come from how the team and individuals within it worked towards their achievements, not what was reached at the end of the road. This classic article by my colleague Gareth on the Power Of The Process is essential if you want to explore this concept in more detail.
Summary
A big part of our role when we work with an organisation is helping them to create discussions and opportunities that drive the ideas of culture for themselves. Every organisation is different, and if you wish to discuss how you can achieve the right balance between culture and high performance, we would love to hear from you.
Feel free to email me directly at [email protected] to discuss our team consulting options in more detail.
Teams are like teams in everyday aspects of life, so many situations occur in everyday life but it is hard representing a space where everyone gets to judge and you are held to such high standards (and represent other people you maybe even don’t know). So important to keep authentic and true to your personal values, identity and needs and not leave sight of that all along. It’s not about the crowds judging but as you recommend how you feel inside :).
I agree that how teams and environments are assessed massively influences team behaviour and thus the culture. In a non-sporting context, within the UK the method of assessing schools (OFSTED) has been outcome and results focused for a long time. With some discussions with teachers you can appreciate that how they are evaluated has influenced teaching behaviour – teaching for outcomes rather than maybe teaching for learning at times.
Within sport, a purely results focused definition of success might encourage or allow more unethical behaviours – win at all costs. Not doing what’s best for the person, but what’s best for the wallet/trophy cabinet, despite the fact both can be achieved with the right approach.
I wonder what the difference is between an individual sport (say, weightlifting) vs a team-based sport when it comes to changing the culture of a group of people or an individual. How might you tailor an intervention for an individual vs a team when either of these two are not performing at their best? What are the metrics you need to measure in order to operationalise a ‘healthier’ process-driven culture?
This article is quite powerful. I think culture plays an important role in team development, value formation, and group dynamics. When working with teams, I agree that focusing only on winning may not be the best strategy. Rather, when working with teams, group cohesion, working together, engaging in play and social support, and team development strategies may help with creating a culture that supports team members and builds values that can withstand the test of time especially when things get tough. This may also increase and maintain the motivation and value of the individual players of the team.
I liked the point that culture is fluid and is shaped over time. This raises the question of how much of this change happens naturally and how much is actively driven by leadership. What has been your experience of how much can be actively intervened in culture and which variables determine the influence? Concepts such as the 5RS model (Fransen et al. 2020) specifically describe how a team culture and social identity can be built through leadership. Yet, in my experience, this conceptualisation can only be applied on a case-by-case basis and requires an individual assessment of the team dynamics and an understanding of the existing values of the team and club.
It is interesting to see the cultural shift within playing groups, coaching staffs and the fans in modern sport. I’m always captivated by the culture within England cricket at the moment, the environment that Stokes & McCullum create appears to be so liberating for the players within it, and to have really released the tension shackles of most of my cricket watching youth. And yet know, what to me would seem to be psychologically safe and positive environment, regularly gets labelled as them not caring and being unbothered by outcomes. How would you bridge that culture gap between inside and out I wonder?
I remember the 2018 ball tampering scandal, particularly the discussions about team culture. I completely agree with your point about openly naming culture with input from everyone and that it should be worked on actively. In my experience, teams will often set goals or discuss team culture at the start of the season only for it to be forgotten during the season and only reviewed at the end. I believe it is so important to not only work on goals and culture intentionally at the start of the season but to regularly check in and see what is and isn’t working rather than letting it fall by the wayside.